Wikileaks

[lisaparadise]

definitely a big supporter of what wikileaks, assange, and manning have done. The u.s. Has too many secret military actions/torture centers around the world, and some of that needs to be dealt with.

One tiny example: We've been bombing yemen in secret, with the head of yemen claiming it by his own forces (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...e-strikes.html). If some folks have such a hard-on for violence, at least man up when you're doing it. Wikileaks is just making publicly available government documents others forwarded to them, not anyone's personal private information.

It's sort of like how the saudi king thinks he can jawbone the u.s. Into doing his dirty work for him. Foreigners clearly think americans are so stupid they can tell us what to do, and we actually jump on cue every time.

its assholes like you that give americans a bad name go back to wherever it is you came from cause you cant be american

[NYBURBS]

I agree with some of your points but leaking secret/confidential information to the World is not the way to go about this.

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree there.

I'll tell you that solving the Palestinian issue will stop 70% of the hatred we encounter worldwide. Instead of letting the American Chrisitan right wing and the Jewish Israeli one hi-jack the policies of both allies, and build more settlements, we should solve that problem ASAP.

The Palestinian debacle is a source of great contention, and I'm no fan of our policies there, but solving that would not remedy many of the other transgressions we have secretly committed. Also, while the Israelis have much to answer for, the Arabs basically screwed over the Palestinians in 1948, and have continued to do so over the past 60 years. I'm sure there are diplomatic cables dealing with this issue, and hopefully they will get some exposure.

[Ben]

Exactly.... We should punish people who EXPOSE crimes. And not the people who commit the crimes.
Take, say, the economic crash. The people that caused the crash -- John Paulson, who made $3.7 billion betting against the sub-prime market, and others -- are rewarded, are bailed out.
Ya know, the bailing out of the banks.
Now that goes against capitalist orthodoxy... in the sense that when the lender lends he -- or she -- assumes the risk. That didn't happen. The taxpayers, or tax-suckers, handed the banks trillions of dollars. Ya know, TOO BIG TOO FAIL -- ha! ha!
So, the people who commit crimes are rewarded. And those who EXPOSE crimes are punished. It's understandable in a state-capitalist polyarchy....
And, lastly, quoting that left-leaning loony (kidding, of course) Noam Chomsky:
"I think we should pay attention to what we learned from the leaks. What we learned, for example, is the kinds of things I’ve said. Perhaps the most dramatic revelation, or mention, is the bitter hatred of democracy that is revealed both by the U.S. Government – Hillary Clinton, others – and also by the diplomatic service.To tell the world– well, they’re talking to each other- to pretend to each other that the Arab world regards Iran as the major threat and wants the U.S. to bomb Iran, is extremely revealing, when they know that approximately 80% of Arab opinion regards the U.S. and Israel as the major threat, 10% regard Iran as the major threat, and a majority, 57%, think the region would be better off with Iranian nuclear weapons as a kind of deterrent. That is does not even enter. All that enters is what they claim has been said by Arab dictators – brutal Arab dictators. That is what counts.
How representative this is of what they say, we don’t know, because we do not know what the filtering is. But that’s a minor point. But the major point is that the population is irrelevant. All that matters is the opinions of the dictators that we support. If they were to back us, that is the Arab world. That is a very revealing picture of the mentality of U.S. political leadership and, presumably, the lead opinion, judging by the commentary that’s appeared here, that’s the way it has been presented in the press as well. It does not matter what the Arabs believe."

[JoePitt]

First of all, I selected specific portions because otherwise I would be slamming a Wall O' Text onto the board.

Al Qaeda is a monster of our own making, one that came about via the clandestine efforts you, and those like you, are arguing we should keep away from the light of day. The government wanted to keep the Soviets out of Afghanistan and so they took pains to secretly supply and train that which now haunts us. So, you might want to rethink that particular portion of your argument.

We can sit here and rattle off countries and issues all day, but in the end it comes down to the fact that much of what we deal with today is either a direct or indirect result of our clandestine policies of the past. I don't want this perpetual cycle of interfering with countries, that are of little over-all importance to the vast majority of Americans, to continue, and it can only be stopped if it is exposed.

Declaring something as "vital" (thus marking it classified) does not necessarily make it so in reality. There are some things that would fit into that category, weapons designs, defense weaknesses, encryption codes, etc. Most of what was released is classified only because the government knows that it would not be accepted by a large number of Americans if it were made public.

There is a distinct dichotomy between the public persona that the US tries to put on (while handing out the Kool-Aid) and the behind-the-scenes policies that it really pursues. A Supreme Court justice once wrote that "Sunlight is the best disinfectant," well a whole shit load of sunshine just got shined down on our gov't.

How is any of that any different for any other country in the world? Do you seriously believe Chinese citizens know every dirty trick their government plays? Why do you think that the US has to play on such an inequitable playing field? Why should we be held to this impossible standard of transparency when NOONE else is?

While I won't go to the extreme of some of the other posters, the petulant child who stole those files should spend the rest of his sad, sorry life in prison.

BTW, the big mistake with Afghanistan wasn't arming the Taliban, it was the complete abandonment of their country afterwards. If we had just spent a fraction of the money we gave them in weaponry on infrastructure and schools, I believe we wouldn't be there today. Like they said in Charlie Wilson's War, we fucked up the endgame.

I also love how you conveniently ignore Trish's well reasoned arguments.

[Dino Velvet]

Here you go. She looks Mexican to me. Looks like Daniella's Foxxx mother.

I feel bad for any broad that has to sleep with Gaddafi. Dude looks worse than Mickey Rourke.

[fred41]

The world suffers from puritanism. No not that kind of puritanism. The world suffers from purists; i.e. people in the grip of one simple memetic “principle.” One such “principle” claims all information should be available to all people. Let’s call it the “transparency principle.” The corollary is that no information should be classified or held back...the public needs to know. At first blush it’s a motto that has some appeal. But it is by no means self-evidently true. Indeed, a moment’s reflection will reveal that the transparency principle directly contradicts the “privacy principle” which also has considerable appeal. Unlike the folks at Wikileaks, I don’t subscribe to the unadulterated principle of transparency. In our diplomatic practices there is a necessary, if fuzzy, line demarcating the boundary between transparency and privacy; and though the line is fuzzy, Wikileaks crossed it. In their fervor, based on their hard-headed belief that no information should be classified, they published everything they had without scrutiny, without a clear understanding of the consequences and without concern ... their conscious assured by the purity of principle.

I do think that whistle-blowing is important and whistle-blowers need protection. But stealing classified information and publishing it without understanding it is not whistle-blowing.

Very well put.

....agree with most of Viper 600 point's too but I don't wanna copy & paste everything...as far as exposing previous dealings with Afghanistan during their invasion by the USSR..that's already old news to most people who ever picked up a newspaper.

So far, it seems the the private committed a crime against his country and he should be punished for it (if indeed it turns out the information was classified)...no matter how much getting away with it gives boners to people that hate the US.

...so far from what I read...the Diplomatic info makes the USA look a lot better than people want to admit...

...on the other hand, the ease with which it was lifted shows that there are some real embarrassing security holes in the manner in which we handle our documents.

[Cuchulain]

You're referring to Bradley Manning, and for any of the decent minded human beings on here that might want to help in his legal defense, you can go to this link and then click on the donate button:

http://www.bradleymanning.org/

I sent a donation. I saw GOP Congressman Peter King on tv today comparing Wikileaks to Daniel Ellsburg's release of the Pentagon Papers. Ok, I'll buy that. Of course King thought that was a bad thing. I disagree. By releasing the Pentagon Papers, Ellsburg exposed Nixon's crimes in Laos and Cambodia and thereby helped to end that God-awful war.

When our government commits illegal acts, it needs to be exposed. Does every other govt do it? Sure. Are these dirty tricks sometimes the lesser evil? I'm sure they are. Funny thing though - power corrupts, and as the saying goes "sunshine is the best disinfectant". When left to it's own devices, governments tend to keep way too many secrets. It's our duty as citizens to try to rein in the worst of the excesses. Whether in government or the private sector, whistleblowers are a good thing.

Let me ask this - how many of those who are outraged by the Wiki disclosures felt that same outrage when Valerie Plame was outed and her entire CIA team was put at risk? She wasn't doing anything illegal. She was exposed by her own govt for revenge.

[Ben]

From the civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald: "The WikiLeaks disclosure has revealed not only numerous government secrets, but also the driving mentality of major factions in our political and media class. Simply put, there are few countries in the world with citizenries and especially media outlets more devoted to serving, protecting and venerating government authorities than the U.S."

He's a blogger at Salon:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/gl...aks/index.html

[Ben]

Obama’s War on Whistleblowers

By Scott Horton
As a young lawyer, Obama represented a whistleblower; as a presidential candidate, he pledged to “strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government.” But as president, Obama has unleashed the most aggressive assault on whistleblowers Washington has ever seen—surpassing even George W. Bush. The latest example comes in a remarkable prosecution of Steven Kim, a well-known scholar of North Korea’s nuclear program.
Like most area experts at the top of the game, Kim does consulting for the State Department. He works for Lawrence Livermore Labs and was on secondment to the State Department at the time of the events in question. Now, however, Kim finds himself under indictment by the Justice Department. His crime? He spoke to Fox News about how the North Koreans were likely to react to proposed sanction measures. Former prosecutor and Johns Hopkins professor Ruth Wedgwood says that the Fox News report “contains completely unremarkable observations about what a country would do if it was sanctioned for its poor behavior. These kinds of observations were well known to anyone paying attention to public sources and ought not be the basis for making someone a federal felon.” I couldn’t agree more.
Assistant Attorney General David Kris brought the charges. The Kim prosecution is portrayed by him as a “warning to anyone who is entrusted with sensitive national security information and would consider compromising it.” To prohibit discussing such “sensitive” information is effectively to censor public debate about vital facts relating to international affairs and possibly to war. As Kris and his friends would have it, we’re supposed to be kept ignorant while the national-security state cares for us all. It’s also noteworthy that the Obama Justice Department gets worked up when the “leaks” benefit media with a critical attitude towards the administration, Fox News.

[onmyknees]

What does everyone think?personally i say we all put a bounty on there heads they dont deserve jail only death and a nice slow death,i hate rats run to brittain run to swedin ya have to stop sometimes i like to think america has guys like jason bourne whos sole job is to take assholes like this out surly we have snipers right?kill these pricks

Ya Know Lisa....I thought the exact same thing. Why aren't we waking up to find this dude Assange found in an alley with a small caliber bullet in his temple? You know the Russians wouldn't fuck around with this ass hole. This guy would sit down for a fine meal in an upscale Swedish restaurant, and then be clasping his throat as he took his last breath from the poison he just swallowed. We seem so powerless against one individual who obviously doesn't have our best interest in mind. I will be interesting to find out the relationship between Assange and Pvt.. Manning, who should be executed after his court martial, but of course that will never happen. For those who maintain this is ultimately a good thing because of some foolish notion that sunshine is the best disinfectant, there are hundreds of thousands of pages of material, and if just one sentence results in the death of a US serviceman, or CIA agent, then you should occupy the grave right next to that dead hero !
I hesitate to turn this into a political discussion, but I do find irony ( as I usually do) with the reaction of officials and bureaucrats in Washington. Remember when Richard Armitage unwittingly passed the name "Valerie Plame" to several political operatives? At the time, Ms. Plame was employed by the CIA, but I still have doubts of her covert status..nevertheless her name should not have been leaked, but it was...My Gawd you would thought the Iranians had just unlocked our nuclear arsenal codes and were detonating our missiles . In fact..they made movies about it and Scooter Libby was convicted of misleading a grand jury. The NY Times and Washinton Post humped the story for months.Doesn't seem to be the same level of outrage from the NY Times.... But I digress..........The larger question of course is how could this have happened that a Private had access to such sensitive documents. I say let the heads roll !!!!!!!!! Slate magazine has an article today offering the opinion that this is so serious ,Hillary Clinton may ultimately have to resign.